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Brown Stew

A beef stew simmered with onions, carrots, and turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brown Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the fat from the beef and place it in a stewpan to render.

  2. Cut the beef into 2‑inch squares and roll in flour.

  3. Cube the carrots and turnips.

  4. Slice the onion.

Brown and simmer

  1. Add the beef to the hot fat and stir until browned.

  2. Pour in the cold water.

  3. Cover and simmer.

  4. Add the vegetables, salt, and pepper to the stew.

  5. Simmer for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot platter with or without dumplings.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main protein and body of the stew, becoming tender during long simmering.
Flour
Coats the beef so it browns well and thickens the cooking liquid.
Carrots
Add sweetness and firm texture that holds up through long cooking.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly sweet flavor and firm texture to the stew.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and depth as it softens in the stew.

The step that matters

Stir until browned. Searing the flour-coated beef in hot fat builds browned flavor through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or stirring too little causes steaming, leaving the beef grey and less flavorful.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, carrot, turnip, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, carrot, turnip, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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